Posted on 01/18/2007 11:44:34 AM PST by CedarDave
After fruitlessly searching for a way to safely keep her kids' things within their reach in the back seat of the family minivan, Dawn Winters-Rizika of Santa Fe did what a lot of us have probably done.
She thought to herself, "I could make something like that." The steps she took next could likely mean the difference between an actual product and the all-too-common fate of so many useful inventions left cooling on the cranial backburner.
A year's worth of support from a network of local nonprofits, two trade shows and about $45,000 in home equity loans later, a shipment of about 1,500 Kids Consoles is expected to arrive from China this month.
From her distribution center— which also doubles as the family garage— Winters-Rizika hopes to begin sending plastic Kids Consoles to a waiting list of retailers, ranging from parenting supply catalogs to the local auto accessory store. "There's been a big demand", she said.
Winters-Rizika, a 38-year-old former science teacher, first thought of the Kids Console two years ago while carting around her two daughters, Hannah and Sadie, now 2 and 5. Strapped into their car seats, the two girls and their demands for games, headphones and sippy cups presented a serious distraction for their harried chauffeur. She began looking for a simple device that would neatly store such items within their reach, without cluttering up the car.
"I thought someone has to have made something like this," she said. Nobody had.
"The manager at Pep Boys said 'There's your $1 million idea. You make it, and I'll sell it,' '' she recalls.
Using injection-molded plastic car consoles and other bits from Wal-Mart, Winters-Rizika cobbled together a prototype with duct tape and started researching what it would take to market such a product. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
Atta girl.
A liberal would have sued the Government.
Fantastic. Best wishes to her.
If only she'd drop the stupid hyphen, she'd be cool. C'mon, Dawn, you can do it!
It's not something I would run out and buy. How much junk does a kid need to keep occupied in the car? A plush toy or a book sufficed for my kids.
Geez, how did we ever get along before this invention?
A healthy dose of shame for the spoiled brats is a lot cheaper.
I have to agree.
Or so I've observed.
A friend of mine let their 4 year-old take her drawing supplies with her, in their high-end Ford Explorer.
She turned the backs of the leather upholstered front seats into her personal artist's canvas.
Three auto detailers attempted and failed to restore the upholstery and told him to just buy new seats right before he sells the car. Either way, he's going to take a big loss, compared to the best resale value.
I agree, I watch my two grand children so I am driving a lot with them, and somehow we manage to get places with simple things like singing songs or playing word games... and a simple box between the car seats holds books and plush toys they cant live without!!
I see the hyphen and I think this is just a viral marketing puff piece.
seems ms hypen read her copy of guerilla marketing.
Woman was looking in the wrong place. I have a 7 yr old granddaughter that still rides in a booster seat, it has 2 places for sippy cups/drinks built in.
Go to any local sanitary supply place/Smart & Final/etc. and buy a maid's caddy for the rest of the junk. There has been one in my back seat for years.
Of course alot of uppity parents/grandparents would rather pay big money for something that says 'child's caddy' instead.
My son stuck the leather seat in our Expedition full of holes with a piece of metal he had in his pocket - "just to see what it would do."
He couldn't sit down for awhile, but the damage was done.
"Winters-Rizika cobbled together a prototype with duct tape"
Duct tape and bailing wire have endless posibilities. Every man worth his salt should have an ample supply of both in his garage!!!
That sounds odd.....is the kid able to lean that far forward so that she can draw all over the back of the seat?
Congratulations to her on her success, but she has a bigger problem.
She needs to end the "demands" of her children for incessant entertainment. IOW, she needs to stop being the "harried chauffer" and start being the "responsible parent."
Just using the duct tape would have saved a lot of time and effort.
Apparently so; I saw the seats myself and asked him how they got that way. (of course, their single child is spoiled in many other ways, so I should not have been totally surprised).
An infant and a 3 year old demanding headphones? For their iPods, no doubt.
"He couldn't sit down for awhile, but the damage was done."
Careful!!!!!!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1769707/posts
Heh. We live about as far from California as it is possible to live - both physically and spiritually. "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
Lighten up everyone.
If your kids are fine looking out the window or playing with a plush toy, fine.
If not, she's created a product out of thin air so that she can get a piece of the American dream. Drive time is wasted time so I'd rather the kids were coloring outside the lines or putting together puzzles instead of developing the 4 year old's version of road rage. Ma & Pa Kettle won't buy this unless they can afford $50 on it anyway so I don't see a down side for anyone.
Best wishes to the capitalist inventor, hope she makes a million!
Yeah. Pick a %W$%@%ing name, lady!
If your kids are fine looking out the window or playing with a plush toy, fine.
A lot of people with compliant kids are quick to judge those with, um, harder to deal with kids. I know I thought I was a thoroughly competent parent before I had my third child. I could not understand why so many other parents just could not make their kids behave. Then number three came along and humbled me. I have a lot more grace towards parents who struggle with active, strong willed kids. Now number three is a gem of a teenager, but if you had told me that would be the case 12 years ago, I would not have believed you. When he was three I was exhausted and really did not think I was going to survive raising him. He would have needed a much larger one of those caddies.....just for a short trip.
All kids are not the same and neither are parents!
Hey... he's not wearing a helmet..
or HANS device or flameproof suit either
BAD PARENT!!
And he is sitting right next to the door, instead of in the middle of the seat, as a good parent would know to do. BAD PARENT!!
I had a brother like that. He was notorious for taking things apart and destroying property (other folks property). He got plenty of spankings. He's an Electrical Engineer now, if that makes you feel any better...
I was looking for the picture shown with the article in the paper this morning. Did a Google search and came up with the Kemnitzer article. Same name, different product; if she didn't do at least a name search, it's pretty poor research.
as Judge Smails famously stated in Caddyshack........
"well the world need ditch diggers too.........."
Would former science qualify as history?
When the first one flies through the car and strikes a child, inflicting major injury, she'll be sued and lose her house and garage.
I was thinking that if you had the duct tape you can do without all the rest. Presto, no kid distraction!
I like the way you think! :)
That's what they get for buying leather seats in a family car. Vinyl and cloth for us.
And the vinyl wears out so fast, it looks awful when you try to sell the car.
We switched to leather for those reasons, I had cloth seats in my minivan and they looked nasty dirty after awhile and NOTHING would clean them . . . and it wouldn't have mattered had my son stuck holes in cloth or vinyl, would have looked just as bad.
Thank you!
Dr. James Dobson, my favorite child psychologist, says the same thing. A lot of people think they're responsible for the perfect behavior of the first child or two and don't realize that innate temperament is very important in establishing behavior. Then, while they're busy buffing their nails proudly, the next kid comes along. Raised by the same parents in the same way, the next kid is a monster and nothing breaks his stubborn spirit. Dobson even wrote a book about it, called The Strong-Willed Child. When we had child #2 Mr. Fairview and I consulted that book like a Bible (and along with the real Bible).
Atta girl, sending the order off to China and all.
ping for posterity
I have one Perfect Princess and one Boy From Hell.
He's coming around so that he's really just the Boy From Purgatory now . . . but he nearly killed us all.
I prefer cloth, because I do not like leather when it's too cold or too hot, and if I need to protect the back seats (kids, pets or hauling things) I keep a set of very large bath towells in the trunk - color coordinated to the car's interior.
Gray cloth hides most everything, and it is warm as soon as you sit down.
Tell her to try some alcohol swabs or some fingernail polish remover. My daughter did some artwork on our leather couch and I had luck using these.
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